Month: October 2002

Rushing to Save Native Mussels

  • Michigan researchers are searching rivers and lakes for evidence of the native Purple Lilliput (pictured above). Photo by Doug Sweet.

In recent years, a great deal of attention has been focused on zebra mussels. They’re not native to the Great Lakes region and they’re pushing native mussels out of local lakes and streams. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports, one scientist at a Detroit Aquarium has taken on the daunting task of trying to save a small, rare native mussel from disappearing in the state:

Transcript

In recent years, a great deal of attention has been focused on
zebra mussels. They’re not native to the Great Lakes region
and they’re pushing native mussels out of local lakes and streams.
As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste
Headlee reports, one scientist at a Detroit Aquarium has taken
on the daunting task of trying to save a small, rare native
mussel from disappearing in the state:


(ambient sound throughout – whenever Doug Sweet talks)


At a small pond near a highway, biologist Doug Sweet and his team put on waders and wet suits
and prepare to enter the sluggish brown water of Dawson’s Millpond Outlet in Pontiac. All
summer long, Sweet has made the trip from the Belle Isle Aquarium to this small pond looking
for a creature called the Purple Lilliput. These mussels, native to the Great Lakes area, have been
struggling to survive in Michigan, especially since the arrival of Zebra Mussels. Sweet’s made it
his mission to find out if there are any of these Lilliputs in Michigan still alive.


“I was very skeptical and didn’t know if we would find any live ones left because previous
surveyors were beginning to predict that they were gone. No one has found them for several
years.”


Zebra Mussels have been in the Clinton River for six or seven years. Zebras are very competitive
feeders. They strip the food out of the water before the native species can get it. Their presence
in domestic waters has had a catastrophic effect on many species. In fact, because of Zebra
Mussels and other factors like pollution, almost a third of North America’s freshwater mussels are
considered endangered or threatened with extinction.


Doug Sweet says Dawson’s Millpond Outlet is the last place to find Purple Lilliput mussels in
Michigan, and he’s afraid they will die out here, too.


“Looks like mostly all dead Purple Lilliputs. Yup.”


So far, Sweet and his team have found nine live Lilliputs. And that means there are probably
between 100 and 150 of them in that location. Though no one knows how long Purple Lilliputs
live, Sweet says other kinds of lilliput mussels live only about eight years.


“If the Purple Lilliputs are anything similar to that, then we’re running out of time because the
zebra mussels have been here for about six years now. And if they’re not reproducing, if there’s
too much competition, then we might be seeing the very last of the adult live Purple Lilliputs.”


When Sweet moved to the area, zebra mussels were starting to move into the Great Lakes region.
He’s a fish biologist, but he became so concerned about the plight of native mussels, he decided to
find out how they were faring. He contacted other biologists to ask what studies had been done.


Just a few years earlier, Oakland University Biology Professor Doug Hunter started looking for
the Purple Lilliput mussel in several lakes and streams around southeastern Michigan. During his
first few surveys, Hunter found more than 20 Lilliputs, but eventually he gave up hope and
assumed that the small creature was destined to die out in the state.


“Every year we went back after those first couple of fairly successful years, we got fewer and
fewer. The last time I went out there I think I got one or two. And I thought, “Well, this doesn’t
look good at all.” I wrote a report to the Wildlife Division in which I said, “I think this is an
imperiled population that may be on its way to local extinction.”


Doug Sweet picked up the research where Hunter left off and is now focusing his efforts on
trying to save the Purple Lilliput. Sweet says the number of lakes and streams in Michigan where
Zebra Mussels have taken hold is almost doubling every year. He says people should realize that
what they do with their boats affects an entire ecosystem.


“People are responsible for spreading the Zebra mussels all over the place. Everybody who has
Waverunners, boats, fishermen with bait buckets… they have to be conscientious that if they’re
fishing in one lake, you’ve got to clean your boat well before you transfer it to another lake or
stream.”


But even so, it may be too late for the Purple Lilliput. Sweet and his team snorkel through the
murky water, use glass bottom buckets, or dig their fingers into the black sediment, looking for
surviving buried mussels. Eventually, though, the hard work does pay off.


“A live one? Ooh, we think we have another live Purple Lilliput…
There we have it, another live one, ten, so this revises our population estimate right there, because
we found this in a quadrat excavation… This is excellent; it’s exciting. You know, who could say
that you’d get excited over a little critter like that.”


Later the same day, the team finds another live Purple Lilliput, a male, bringing the grand total up
to 11. Sweet hopes he can find a safe haven for the Lilliputs somewhere in southeastern
Michigan where the tiny population can slowly begin to recover. Doug Sweet is now finishing up
his fieldwork, and will soon begin studying his results for a report to the state.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Celeste Headlee.

FAMED EXPLORER SEARCHES FOR LAKES’ SHIPWRECKS

  • The bow of the Grecian, a shipwreck in Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

Underwater explorer Dr. Robert Ballard became a celebrity for finding the Titanic in mid 1980’s. But that ship is just one of his many underwater discoveries. He and his team of researchers travel from one far flung location to another, exploring and searching for lost shipwrecks, ancient coastlines, and unknown deep sea trenches. However, recently his team was at work in Lake Huron. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports:

Transcript

Underwater explorer Dr. Robert Ballard became a celebrity for
finding the Titanic in mid 1980’s. But that ship is just one of his
many underwater discoveries. He and his team of
researchers travel from one far flung location to another,
exploring and searching for lost shipwrecks, ancient
coastlines, and unknown deep sea trenches. However,
recently his team was at work in Lake Huron. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports:


On this fall day, the water’s calm, the sky blue, and the air warm. But Lake Huron isn’t always
this way. The Great Lakes’ legendary storms have left the bottom of Lake Huron’s Thunder Bay
littered with shipwrecks.


(Ship’s horn blast)


(engine noise, water drips and waves throughout piece)


Dr. Bob Ballard and his team from the Institute for Exploration have a research vessel hovering
above one of the shipwrecks in the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary near Alpena,
Michigan.


“I’ve become convinced and what brings me here to Thunder Bay is that the deep sea is probably
the largest museum in the world. There is more history in the deep sea than in all the museums of
the world combined.”


Ballard says the Great Lakes are home to thousands of shipwrecks that trace the evolution of
maritime trade in America, from Native American canoes to modern barges.


“What is really nice about the Great Lakes is because it is fresh water we don’t have wood borers
like we have in salt water. The ships I’ve found, the Titanic, for example, its deck was eaten and
the grand staircase was eaten but here in Great Lakes, because it’s fresh water, you have the best
preserved ships on the planet.”


This is the second year that Ballard and his team have come to the Thunder Bay National Marine
Sanctuary. The sanctuary was created two years ago to preserve the bay’s shipwrecks. According
to historical records, an estimated 116 ships sank here, but only about 40 have been found. And
that’s why Dr. Ballard and his team are here, searching for undiscovered shipwrecks and taking an
up-close look at the ones we already know about.


(ambient sound of man yelling, “Watch the A-Frame.”)


They’re exploring the sanctuary, using underwater robots that are equipped with high definition
video cameras and sonar systems. Dwight Coleman is the Chief Scientist on the expedition.
Earlier in the day they sent two of these robots, Argus and Little Hercules, down into the water
below the research boat.


“So all the data that’s coming up from the vehicles while it’s working on the shipwreck, all the
video data and other information, such as the altitude and the heading and the depth, is all coming
in through these cables and into this control room, and from here we can sit and operate the
vehicles.”


At the moment, Little Hercules’ cameras are focused on a wreck called the E.B. Allen. It’s a
schooner that hauled grain. It sank to the bottom of Thunder Bay after a collision with a ship
called “Newsboy” in 1871. Patrick Labadie is a Maritime Historian who is on board taking a look
at the images of the E.B. Allen.


“It’s a really good glimpse of the accident that took the ship down. The masts are down, the
rigging is all confused and laying on the deck. There is a neat circular hole in the side of the ship
where the other vessel struck it. You can see the evidence of a whole sequence of events:
a collision, the ship’s rigging coming down, sinking, striking the bottom and damaging its bow as
it struck. It’s really fascinating.”


In addition to gathering information, pictures, and video from known wrecks like the E.B. Allen,
Ballard’s team is making some new discoveries here. And Dwight Coleman says they’ve found
two new wrecks in Thunder Bay, including a three-masted schooner from the 1800’s.


“I think the best thing for me is really the exploration, is finding the unknown, and to look into
places that have never been looked at before. And we did that yesterday with this new schooner
ship.”


It’s this excitement of discovery that inspired Dr. Bob Ballard to become an underwater explorer.
Now he’s hoping to give the general public a little taste of what he does and let them explore
underwater sanctuaries without getting cold or wet.


“Well, Thunder Bay is one of 13 marine sanctuaries and if you look around right now, we are the
only people out here. Isn’t that odd? If you go to Yellowstone you’d see thousands of people. So
what we want to do is bring thousands of people here but most people won’t be sophisticated
divers, and go down 100, 200, 300 feet. So a very, very small club of people can actually reach the
shipwrecks, the cultural resources here. And what we’re trying to do is to change that, and we’ve
been in here for two years, surveying the sanctuary, finding all of the ships that are here and then
trying to pick one or two of them and wire them up.”


The idea is to allow people in the sanctuary’s visitor center to go on their own remote controlled
underwater exploration using a system of underwater cameras and robots like Little Hercules. But
even before such a system is in place, the videos and pictures they’re taking will open up the
sanctuary for the general public. For the first time, the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary
visitor’s center will have high quality pictures and videos to show people what the wrecks in
Thunder Bay actually look like.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.

Bear Activity in National Park Increases

The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore plans to step up its education campaign about the do’s and don’ts of living in bear country. Park officials hope that will end this past summer’s encounters between campers and bears. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports:

Transcript

The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore plans to step up its education campaign about
the do’s and don’ts of living in bear country. Park officials hope that will end this past summer’s encounters between campers and bears. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike
Simonson reports.


With about 30 bears on Stockton Island, some of them decided to swim for a less-
crowded scrounging area. So, this summer, campers reported bears rummaging through
their food on neighboring islands – forcing the Park Service to close a couple of
campsites.


Apostle Islands Resource Specialist Julie Van Stappen says the bear population may be a
little crowded. And even though there has been an annual hunt of bears since the mid-1990’s, she doesn’t expect much help thinning out the bear population from hunters.


“Very few people do it. You have to get out to the islands and there’s no motorized equipment allowed, so it would be a very different hunt.”


Next summer, Van Stappen says instead of moving bears or closing campsites, the best
bet is to educate campers about storing food, and not attracting bears in the first place.
She says that would be the simplest way to end the close encounters of the bear kind on
the Apostle Islands.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mike Simonson.

New Bubble Barrier to Repel Asian Carp?

The Asian carp is threatening to invade the Great Lakes. Right now there’s an electric barrier in the Chicago canal to stop the fish from getting into Lake Michigan, but a new study shows it’s not 100-percent effective. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie Macdowell reports, scientists are working on a second line of defense…bubbles:

Transcript

The Asian carp is threatening to invade the Great Lakes. Right now there’s an
electric barrier in the Chicago canal to stop the fish from getting into Lake
Michigan, but a new study shows it’s not 100% effective. As the Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Annie Macdowell reports, scientists are working on a second
line of defense – bubbles.


In a recent experiment by the Illinois Natural History Survey, a startled Asian
carp swam straight through an electric field like the one in the Chicago Canal.


The International Joint Commission is bringing specialists from Britain to build
an experimental acoustic bubble barrier and test it on the Asian carp. It works
like this: a pump filled with air and sound expels bubbles with sound trapped
inside.


Bill Moy of the Wisconsin Sea Grant says the process creates a nearly seamless
barrier.


“If you just project sound into the water, it’s not like a wall of sound. But by
entraining the sound in this bubble, you can actually create a wall of sound in
the water that’s much more uniform.”

Moy says the infrasound inside the bubbles is like an idling truck – you can feel it
more than you hear it.


The fish can’t find a break in the sound, so they turn around.


The International Joint Commission says if they decide to install the bubble
barrier, it won’t be until the spring.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Annie MacDowell.

Great Lakes Governorships Up for Grabs

Seven of the eight Great Lakes states have governor’s races next month. One analyst says the results of those elections could affect how well the states work together on the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Seven of the eight Great Lakes states have Governor’s races this month. One analyst says
the results of those elections could affect how well the states work together on the
environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports.


There will be at least four new governors in the Great lakes region, due to incumbents
stepping down. Political scientists say a fifth incumbent may be voted out of office.


Barry Rabe is a professor of environmental policy and public policy at the University of
Michigan. He says the eight governors have traditionally agreed on some issues like
diversion of water. But Rabe says the upcoming elections could affect more contentious
issues.


“I think where other challenges emerge are on issues like air pollution – where you
literally may have prevailing wind patterns so that say, the pollutants that begin in Illinois
may wind up in Michigan and other states – and how states could work cooperatively to
resolve those issues.”


Rabe also says more of the Great Lakes governors may soon have to work together on
water quality and global warming. Democrats hope to gain several governor’s seats in the
region. But Rabe says for cooperation purposes, personality may be more important than
party label.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Organics Hitting Mainstream Markets

A new report shows a shift in how organic foods are sold in the United States. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman reports:

Transcript

A new report shows a shift in how organic foods are sold in the United States.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman reports.


More people purchased organic food in conventional supermarkets than any
other venue in 2000. That’s according to a study by the U.S. Department
of Agriculture.


It’s part of a trend of an increasing demand for organic food in the
United States. The study shows that sales of organic products increased
each year in the 1990’s. The USDA’s Kathy Greene says it represents an enormous
change in the 50-year history of organic food sales.


“Conventional grocery stores know there’s consumer interest and they
also don’t want to be left behind. It’s a very fast-growing sector and
for a lot of products we haven’t met demand yet.”


Greene says organic food is more likely to be sold in large urban areas
and college towns. The USDA study reports that almost two-thirds of
Americans buy organic food at least occasionally. But fewer than 5% buy
it on a regular basis.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chris Lehman.

Congressman Opposes Seaway Expansion

The Army Corps of Engineers is studying the possibility of opening the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway system to larger ships. Congressmen in the Midwest say deeper channels could bring billions more dollars in shipping trade. But a New York lawmaker has come out against the plan, saying the environmental costs would be devastating. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports:

Transcript

The Army Corps of Engineers is studying the possibility of opening the Great Lakes-St.
Lawrence Seaway system to larger ships. Congressmen in the Midwest say deeper
channels could bring billions more dollars in shipping trade. But a New York lawmaker
has come out against the plan, saying the environmental costs would be devastating. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports.


Congressman John McHugh, a Republican who represents the entire New York stretch of
the St. Lawrence River, says digging deeper seaway channels would be a disaster for the
river and the people who live there.


“Unavoidable and very, very significant impacts to water flow, to the shoreline, to
property owners, to the entire hydrology of that very, very important environment and
all that it means to us.”


So McHugh has become the first federal representative to oppose expansion. He joins
environmentalists and some scientists who say the costs of invasive species from foreign
ships outweigh commercial benefits.


The Army Corps of Engineers says if larger, so-called “container” ships could reach ports
in the Midwest, the Seaway could generate up to one and half billion dollars more a year.
McHugh says he’ll propose to cut funding for further Corps’ study on expansion when
Congress debates the issue this fall.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.

Stump Speech for Democracy

Election Day is right around the corner. About 70-percent of the voting age population in the United States is registered to vote. If national voting patterns hold true, only about half of those registered voters will go to the polls in this off-year election. A still smaller group of Americans will have laid the groundwork leading up to election day. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator, Julia King, asks if you’ve done your part for democracy this season:

Transcript

Election Day is right around the corner. About 70% of the voting age population in the
United States is registered to vote. If national voting patterns hold true, only about half of
those registered voters will go to the polls in this off-year election. A still smaller group
of Americans will have laid the groundwork leading up to election day. Great Lakes Radio
Consortium commentator Julia King asks if you’ve done your part for democracy this
season.


There’s an election coming. Have you done your fair share of the work?


Can I let you in on a little secret? Some of us were talking the other day and we’re tired of
carrying most of the democracy load while the rest of you sit on your bums.


What’s that you say? You VOTE? Ha! That’s a mere drop in the proverbial ocean of
democracy.


Have you ever volunteered your time for a candidate? If you don’t like any of the
candidates, have you encouraged a decent, competent person you do like to run for office?
Have you considered running yourself? Have you ever worked the polls? A whole 14-
hour shift?


Have you ever written a check to a candidate? One that’s big enough to help, but not so
big that it’s an attempt to finance an unpopular agenda (like federal funding for circus
pigeon farmers)?


Have you talked civilly with your friends and neighbors about the issues? Asked others’
opinions – from the political left and right – and told them yours?


Have you stuffed envelopes, delivered yard signs, organized a candidate forum or debate?
Have you asked local media to do a better job of covering elections – reminded them that
the most crucial coverage comes not on election night, but in the months and weeks leading
up it?


Yes, yes, everybody’s busy (and yes, I’m aware that I’m preaching). But democracy
doesn’t just happen. Somebody’s got to do the work. If you’re one of those people who’s
been doing your chores, pat yourself on the back. Keep it up.


If you’re one of the people who’s been coasting up until now, consider pitching in. But
like the third grade teacher who ends the lecture with ‘You know who you are,’ these
words aren’t for everyone. There are countless Americans whose lives are already
bursting at the seams with inescapable poverty or tragedy, or both. Those citizens are
already doing their fair share.


These words are for the other countless Americans – the ones who throw great dinner
parties and find the perfect pair of shoes, or build model airplanes in the garage, or never
miss the West Wing. These words are for happy, healthy Americans who benefit the most
from democracy and simply give too little back.


So if you fit that description, this is for you: Get off your bum and do some work for
democracy. There’s an election coming, for goodness sake.


Julia King lives and writes in Goshen, Indiana. She comes to us by way of the Great Lakes Radio Consortium.

Bringing the Farm to the City

There’s a new kind of farmer being trained… city farmers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ben Calhoun has the story of someone who has dedicated his life to training them:

Transcript

There’s a new kind of farmer being trained…city farmers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ben Calhoun has
the story of someone who has dedicated his life to training them.


Will Allen has been farming all his life. But ten years ago, he decided he wanted to do
something different. So he started ‘Growing Power.’


You’ll find Growing Power’s Farm on a busy street on the northside of Milwaukee. It’s in
the middle of a row of houses and for a farm its pretty small.


Most days you’ll also find Will Allen there. Today, Allen’s giving a tour of the place. He
leads the group through Growing Power’s four green houses. There are rows of herbs,
eggplants, compost heaps, and boxes filled with worms.


“And where do you set the worms?”


“The worms, we started out with 35 pounds of worms some five years ago. Now we
have millions of worms.”


“I see.”


There’s a lot to see here.


Allen pulls together a lot of pieces to make his organization work.


Growing Power has been finding people to start urban farms for more than ten years –
something Allen says is actually harder than most people think, because he says farming
is harder than most people think.


“And when I sit down with kids’ groups I tell ’em, I say, ‘ Look at my hands. If you guys
are gonna do this work, your hands are gonna look like mine, if you’re truly gonna do it.’
I’m not talking about going into a class and growing a bean in a cup. I say, ‘You’re
gonna get hot, you’re gonna get sweaty, you’re gonna get dirty, you’re going to get
frustrated sometimes.’ But I say when you grow something, it’s gonna take all that pain
away.”


Allen’s found a lot of people who want to do that type of work.


Farming projects launched by Growing Power are scattered across the Midwest.


About 80 miles southwest of Chicago is the kind of place that Allen builds – it’s called
‘Growing Home.’ Growing Home is a farming project started by Chicago’s Coalition for
the Homeless. The Coalition buses homeless people here to grow corn, beans, and
greens.


Here Milton Marks sweats as he pulls black-eyed pea plants out of the dirt. Marks used
to be an auto mechanic. And he came to the project through a city job program. Marks
says it took a while to get used to working here on a farm.


“You know, at first it put me in mind of that picture, ‘Children of the Corn.’ (laughs)
So uh, I was kinda careful when I went up in the corn field – you know what I’m saying?
Yeah, I was kinda careful. But it was interesting and I liked the concept.”


Marks isn’t working alone, and just a few bean rows over, Ron Carter is stomping a
pitchfork into the ground.


Ron became involved through a homeless shelter in Chicago. He says he’s found a new
niche for himself working here on the farm.


“I love it, I love this type of work. You know, but at first, not in my wildest dreams.
Thought that I would be interested in this type of work. It’s been an overwhelming
feeling. It’s been really, really overwhelming.”


Carter’s spent his whole life in Chicago. He says the people he knows in the city, they
just don’t farm.


But in Chicago’s Southside Woodlawn neighborhood there’s another project actually
bringing farming into the city. Right in the middle of the residential neighborhood is
what looks like a home garden – maybe 50 feet by 60 feet. It’s filled with vegetables.


Carol Hughes started this space. As we walk around the plot of plants, she describes
what she thinks is already making her project a success.


“There’s a certain serenity about being in this space. Can’t you feel it? You know, even
though you’re here and there are cars swishing by on either side of us, and other elements
of the community are out (laughs), it’s just, there’s a serenity here, there’s a quiet here,
there’s the greenery. And I love seeing that light, I love seeing things grow.”


Hughes says right now most of the people working on her project are kids. But she says
the farm is getting lots of interest from all parts of her community.


Will Allen says that’s the kind of excitement that makes a project a success. He also
says it’s something that keeps him going.


“I see it happen, every year, year after year. But to see somebody else’s face . . . ‘ I can’t
believe I grew these peppers, or tomatoes, or corn.’ You know, that’s a beautiful thing.
That’s another one of the things that keeps me doing this.”


Allen says Carol Hughes’ project will be four times bigger next year than it is this year.
He says they’ll work to purify the soil so they can use all their land. All together,
Growing Power will continue working with about 35 projects starting up throughout the
Midwest. And they say they expect five more to be up and running by next season.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Ben Calhoun.

GAUGING MANKIND’S ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT

In the wake of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, there’s been a lot of talk about how to balance human needs with the health of the planet. Ecologists have been trying to measure the impact of humans on the environment for a number of years, with some sobering results. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Daniel Grossman went to the New York Botanical Garden recently to gauge mankind’s ecological footprint:

Transcript

In the wake of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South
Africa, there’s been a lot of talk about how to balance human needs with the health of the
planet. Ecologists have been trying to measure the impact of humans on the environment
for a number of years, with some sobering results. The Great Lake Radio Consortium’s Daniel Grossman went to the New
York Botanical Garden recently to gauge mankind’s ecological footprint.


[Rain forest sounds, misters, tinkling of water, rain falling on leaves]


To get a good sense of the impact humans are having on earth, you could travel for weeks
on intercontinental plane flights, river boats and desert jeeps. Or, as Columbia University
biologist, Stuart Pimm suggested, visit a botanical garden. There, under the glass and
ironwork of a conservatory, Pimm says you can see a resource that humans are
over-using – Earth’s most important resource, its plant-life.


“We’re sitting in the rain forest here at the New York Botanical Society. And it’s a riot of
green.”


Professor Pimm says here beneath the misters in the Tropical Rain Forest Gallery is a
good place to start a whirlwind tour of Earth’s greenery. The air is heavy with moisture
and sweet-smelling.


“Rain forests are some of the most productive parts of the planet. They grow extremely
quickly and they are therefore generating a lot of biological production.”


What Pimm calls biological production most of us know as plant growth. Biologists say
all this green growth in tropical forests and elsewhere on Earth is the foundation upon
which all life rests.


“Everything in our lives is dependent upon biological productivity – everything that we
eat, everything that our domestic animals eat.”


And everything that every other animal eats as well. In a recent book, Pimm painstakingly
tallies up how much biological productivity we use. He starts with the rain forest. In the
last 50 years, loggers and settlers have cut down 3 million square miles of lush tropical
forests. Much was cut down for subsistence agriculture, a purpose Pimm says it serves
poorly.


“Although the tropical forest looks rich and productive, it is a very special place. And
when you chop that forest down the areas that replace it often become very, very much
less productive.”


[Sound of walking around conservatory]


Pimm speaks of the toll on greenery of cities and roads and of land converted to farming
in temperate regions such as the U.S. Midwest. Then, trekking along the botanical
garden’s gravel paths, he leaves behind the tropical mists and steps into the dry heat of a
Southwestern desert. Deserts and other dry lands are not very productive, but they
account for a substantial fraction of Earth’s land surface. Most of it is grazed by flocks of
sheep, goats, camels and cattle, often causing severe damage to vegetation. When these
uses are added to the other impacts of humanity on earth’s bounty, the results are
surprisingly large.


“What silence has shown is that we are taking 2/5ths of the biological production on land,
a third from the oceans. And that of the world’s fresh water supply, we’re taking half.”


[Fade out sound of conservatory. Fade up sound of Texas frogs.]


[Sound of plane engines]


Frogs and toads croak out a spring mating ritual in a concrete drainage ditch. Nearby, a
pilot practices maneuvers in a small plane occasionally drowning out the amphibian
serenade. Living in culverts, sharing the night with droning engines, these wild animals
are never completely free of human influences. From his Stanford University office,
Professor Peter Vitousek says wherever you look, the din of human activities is
interrupting and crowding out other species. Vitousek made one of the first attempts to
tally the impact of people on plant productivity in 1985.


[Frogs fade out in time for Vitousek’s act]


“The message to me was that we are already having a huge impact on all the other species
because of our use of the production of Earth and the land surface of Earth. That’s not
something that our models predict for some time in the future or something that we’re
guessing at on the basis of fairly weak information. It’s something that we’re clearly
doing now. That’s already happening.”


Many ecologists say this conclusion is beyond doubt. What they can’t say is whether
human domination of so much of nature’s output is good or bad. University of Minnesota
Professor David Tilman says as a member of the human race himself, he appreciates the
comforts in clothing, shelter and food our lifestyles buy us. And he acknowledges that the
survival of our own species is probably not imperiled – at least for the moment – by the
destruction of others. Still, he wonders if someday we’ll regret today’s resource intensive
practices.


“I think the more relevant question to me is, ‘Are we doing this wisely?’ ‘Are we wisely
appropriating the resources of the world?’ So, my concern is that we live in a balanced
way – a way that is sustainable through generations – that we leave our children and
grandchildren the same kind of world that we have.”


An expert on the impacts of agriculture, Tilman says we’re using up more resources than
can be replaced. He says if we don’t grapple with these important issues now, by the time
the human population reaches eight to ten billion or so people later this century, it might
be too difficult for us to do enough to save the planet’s life as we know it today.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Daniel Grossman.